... this is a fact. The Palestinian leadership, with a couple of happy new exceptions like Fayyad, is just pathetic or worse. The Palestinians are among the world's most scorned and dispossessed people, but they've been saddled with the worst liberation movement in the history of liberation movements.
First and foremost, if they'd been a nonviolent movement, they'd have had their state 20 years ago. No understanding at all of either the Jewish or the American conscience, which resists "resistance" at all costs but melts at the first sight of a person standing before a tank holding a rose.
Second, the PA was until recently just hideously corrupt. Arafat and his cronies got away with stealing so much money from those poor people. Completely unconscionable.
Third, they appear to have no understanding of why they're really losing. They're losing because American public opinion will never be on their side. Americans will always back the Jews. To Americans, Jews are nice, successful people. They're funny. Jerry Seinfeld. Who's gonna be against Jerry Seinfeld's people?...
... Palestinians? Yes, as Bill Clinton said, the only Palestinians he knows are college professors and doctors. In Clinton's experience and in my more limited one, Palestinian Americans are a high-achieving and very warm people. But all most Americans know is, they're a bunch of terrorists. Palestinian leadership needs to take that seriously and change it. None of this is meant as a defense of Israeli leadership. They're schmucks, too, or worse. So I don't really like either side very much, in terms of their leaders I mean, which is why I don't write about this very often. But I do know that if Palestinians moved to nonviolence and undertook a smart campaign to improve their image here, they'd turn things around on a dime.
That was from the keyboard of Michael Tomaksy.
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